Kathryn Albright - Western Spring Weddings - The City Girl and the Rancher / His Springtime Bride / When a Cowboy Says I Do

Back in Boston she’d been an acknowledged spinster at twenty-four. “On the shelf,” everyone said. But even so, she had a life in Boston. She had fit in. There were concerts, afternoon teas, even happy hours spent in the library. On fine days people walked along the streets and in the lush, green parks, stopping for a soda at the candy store or the creamery. She missed it all.

She marveled that Emily was not lamenting the lack of ice-cream sodas. But her daughter seemed to revel in every new and exciting thing she found in the West—horses to pet, Maria’s cornhusk dolls to play with, spring wildflowers to pick, even the nightly tall tales Gray spun to lull her to sleep. Even now she could hear his low, gravelly voice coming from the parlor where he sat with her daughter cradled on his lap.

“And then,” he continued, “I left home. Well, to tell the truth, I ran away from home.”

“Why’d you do that?” Emily queried. “I’d never run away from my mama.”

A long silence fell. Instead of measuring out flour for the cake she was determined to bake, Clarissa found herself listening intently.

“Well, it’s like this, honey,” Gray continued. “My ma and my pa didn’t like each other much. They yelled and screamed at each other every day for fourteen years, and finally I’d had enough.”

“What’d you do?”

Another silence. “Not sure I should tell you, Squirt.”

“Yes, you should tell me!” she persisted. “I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

Clarissa heard a low chuckle and then his voice continued. “Well, let’s see, what did I do? What do you think I did?”

“I bet you found a horse and a lot of money and you ate lots and lots of strawberry ice cream.”

“You like strawberry ice cream, huh?”

“Uh-huh. I like it better than anything.”

“Better than...scrambled eggs and bacon?”

“Yes!”

“Better than...roast chicken?”

“Way better! Especially when Mama bakes it.”

Clarissa’s lips tightened.

“Better than...Maria’s molasses cookies?”

“Yeah!”

“Guess that settles it, then. Gotta churn some ice cream one of these days.”

“Strawberry!” she shouted. “But first you have to finish my story.”

Clarissa laughed out loud as she mixed the listed ingredients together. Once Emily set her mind to something, she never gave up.

“Ah. Well, let’s see...where were we?”

“Your mama and your papa were screaming and you got a horse.”

“Yeah. Well, I lit out. Uh, you know what that means?”

“It means you...bought a big lamp?”

“That’s right in one way, Emily. I got myself a job and then I bought a lamp. I went to work in a silver mine, way down deep underground.”

“Was it dark?”

“Plenty dark. And cold.”

Clarissa dropped her mixing spoon. At only fourteen years of age he went to work in a silver mine?

“What’dja do?”

“I worked my a—worked really hard. And pretty soon, guess what?”

“You bought some ice cream!”

Gray’s rich laughter washed over Clarissa, but his tale was sending chills up her spine. How awful that must have been, working in a mine. What happened then? she wanted to ask. She slid the cake into the oven, still listening intently.

“No, I didn’t buy ice cream. I bought something else. Something a lot bigger.”

“What was it?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow night, okay?”

“No! Tell me now. Please? Puleeze?

Clarissa snapped Mrs. Beeton’s cookbook shut. “Emily...” she warned. “Time for bed.”

In the next moment her daughter’s light footsteps pattered up the stairs, and Gray appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Hope you don’t mind me tellin’ her these stories.”

She looked up. “They are certainly...educational,” she said carefully.

“Never thought of it that way, but yeah, I guess it was educational. For me, anyway.”

“It would seem you learned a great deal, at a very young age.”

When he didn’t answer, she shot a look at his face. He had a hard time keeping his unruly dark hair out of his eyes, which, she admitted, were quite nice—an odd gray-blue, like the barrel of the revolver he kept in a holster hanging over the front door. She liked his mouth, too, except when it narrowed in disapproval at something one of the ranch hands did. Mostly his lips were firm and usually curved in a smile, especially around Emily.

But tonight it was his eyes that caught at her—steel hard and unblinking. “I guess I shouldn’t be telling her those things,” he said slowly.

“You mean about working in a silver mine?” At his startled look, she added, “I was listening as I made the cake.”

“No. Other things I guess maybe I shouldn’t be telling her, about my ma and pa and why I left home. Bet you never met anybody who ran away from home before.”

Something in his voice changed, and all at once she didn’t know what to say. He pushed past her toward the back door. “Gotta check the barn before I turn in.”

“Gray?”

He stopped and stood unmoving, his back to her. “Yeah?”

“My cake will be done when you get back. I’ll cut a piece for you and leave it on the table.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Clarissa.” He grasped the doorknob, then spoke over his shoulder. “Cut a piece for yourself, too. Maybe heat up the coffee. There’s something I want to say to you.”

When he disappeared through the doorway she found her mouth had gone dry. He wanted to say something to her? What was it? Was it about Emily? About Ramon spending his valuable time showing her daughter how to plant seeds for a kitchen garden?

All at once she was certain she knew what it was. He’s going to fire me.

She untied the apron and paced back and forth across the kitchen floor, waiting for the cake to finish baking and the cold coffee to heat up. Where would she go? What would she do?

She couldn’t think about it. At last she peeked in the oven, tested the cake with a straw from the broom on the back porch, and lifted out the cake pan using her bunched-up apron as a pot holder.

She was learning to cook! But perhaps not well enough to warrant her weekly three-dollar salary. Perhaps he expected his fried eggs not to be too hard or so runny they slid off his fork and the biscuits to be light and fluffy, like Maria’s, not hard enough to bounce, as her first batch had been. She couldn’t even think about attempting another roast chicken; she had to work up her courage for that.

The more she mulled it over, the more unsettled her stomach grew. She picked up a knife, sawed two squares from the cake and set them on two small plates. Before she could find forks, the back door banged open.

“Coffee smells good,” he remarked.

“It’s not fresh, I reheated this morning’s.”

“Still smells good.” He dropped into a chair. She poured him a large mug and slid the plate of cake toward him.

“You havin’ some, too?”

“Yes.”

He took a bite, and Clarissa watched avidly as he chewed and swallowed.

“Tastes kinda...um...flat.”

“Flat?” She took a tentative bite. The cake was nicely browned on top, and it had a fine texture. But he was right—it had no flavor at all. What had she done wrong? She grabbed Mrs. Beeton’s book and thumbed through the pages until she found the recipe. Flour. Sugar. Eggs. Saleratus. And salt. Salt! Good heavens, she’d forgotten to add salt. No wonder it tasted flat!

She snatched Gray’s plate away.

“Hold on a minute, it’s not that bad, honest!”

“Don’t lie to me, Gray. Don’t ever, ever lie to me.”

He blinked and his fork clattered onto the table. “Clarissa, I never lie. I’ve never lied to anyone in my entire life, not even—” He broke off.